Advanced Practice 2

mid-urbia/ ‘the playroom’ a short story

artist statement

‘The playroom’ - a short story

references

Artist Statement

Whilst a 5 year old is growing up in a mid-century built Leicester village suburb, a 5 year old Asian Ugandan girl arrives in Leicester in 1972 to start a new life in the city. Near and yet so far away. Their lives are totally separate, worlds apart, but takes place within a few miles of each other.

What if they did come together in the past without the prejudice and conflict ? in a totally safe place where no judgments would be made, where childhood dreams could be realised. Separate lives, finding a common ground, meeting as young teenagers on their paths to becoming independent young women. What would this relationship be ? and what type of environment could they occupy ? What could they discover together ?

The aim of this project is not to answer the most obvious and challenging political questions of today.  The attempt is to highlight the hidden agendas of a personal story crucial to the history of Leicester and the UK. To portray separate cultural worlds and ideologies adopted from the past that are passed from generation to generation but find themselves sometimes at odds in today’s world. The home is the starting point of the art – specifically the playroom. The meaning of a room for the use of children’s play is linked to social class and status. This room brought over from the middle class suburb, is re-defined from the past, to raise the sub-conscious thoughts of the first experiences of home to the surface, alongside the Asian culture and issues of those times.

The art project is a short story centred around the overlap of space and event, portrayed through text – a form of ‘paper’ architectural text and art, with the physical 3-D model alongside to illustrate the story. The story is a blend of historical events and places, principally, a young child starting a new life in another country after being brutally expelled from her homeland. This is highlighted through the verbatim theatre method. Some of the first hand dialogue was obtained from real life stories during the event ‘From Expulsion to Settlement : The Ugandan Asian Story’ held at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery on 29th October 2022. The script is a hybrid of different real life quotes embedded within a short story, a blend of fiction and non-fiction worlds, set within a narrative of objects and experiences with meanings. The aim is that verbatim will enable a richer contextual underpinning to the historical events of that time.

The location is a space on a boundary between the city and suburbia – the race course and the golf course, bounded by development – connecting major roads, housing and an out of town store. This edge setting is the location where the narrative takes place. Named ‘Mid-urbia’, this is an assemblage of transcultural symbolism and mystical significance. It is a place for dreaming and stories in a half-realised world. Inspired by my father’s drawing (the architect) of the playroom extension in 1969, the repositioning and reappropriating the room taken from that time gives a new meaning to the place it occupies. Only actually vaguely remembered, it’s transparent walls form a blur between outside and in. Pieces of place and time occupy Mid-urbia, past meanings in the form of objects, archives, tropes and folklore reimagined in a new context. Mid-urbia is a site of tension between the child moving from the village suburb into the boundary of the city and the life of a child in an urban environment exploring the boundaries. Sited on an edge setting

The Village suburb is Oadby, the City is Leicester. The Mid-urbia space is within the land in the middle of the race course, which at one time, contain 9 holes of an eighteen hole golf course. Helen is from the town of Oadby, a village suburb,  just over the other of the boundary of the outskirts of Leicester. Sahera is from Uganda and arrives in the City of Leicester as a young girl in 1972.

Advanced Practice 2

mid-urbia a short story

The Dwindling Golfer

The year is 2022. It was a warm and pleasant day for the 48th Annual Imperial Golf Day at Oadby Golf Club. The very tall Tarquin Brooke-Smyth, club chairman and tournament organiser, marched down the tenth fairway with a camp swagger and smile on his face. His playing partner stood, propped by a club in one hand, waiting for his caddy to find his ball in the undergrowth. Tarquin rolled his eyes and then immediately noticed by the side of the green on the next hole , Rich Nibnose, one of the course maintenance contractors, mending the boundary fencing. Not intruders again !... thought Tarquin.

Jogging his memory, Tarquin made a note on the back of his score card, to remind himself at the next meeting to put forward the motion to dismiss the contract cleaners for the club house. The new flag on the tenth green flag pole went completely unnoticed.

Woolco

Innocent People were being murdered in British cities and no rubbish was being collected; the bins on the streets were stinking !. Even ambulance workers and grave diggers were on strike. It felt as if the world had turned dark and dreary. The old magic of life had not completely gone in 1979, but it felt to Helen it was fast disappearing. Helen left the family lounge and disappeared into her bedroom, the TV news was too sad and quite confusing.

Helen looked forward to meeting her new friend from school, Sahera. That Saturday, they met at the bus stop and travelled to Oadby’s out of town store – Woolco. An off spin of Walmart from the USA, this was a true megastore, the first type of it’s kind in the country. A haven of delights, hundreds of interesting ordinary objects from different places all under one gigantic roof. Plastic watering cans, glass patterned mugs, shiny wrapping paper and dazzling light fittings of every type and design, suspended from the ceiling. The display was a visual feast for the two teenagers. Little did they know this was no comparison to what they would encounter later that evening.

Even though the few coins they had in their coat pockets only covered the cost of a quarter of sweets from the pick & mix, this gave them the reason to go to this vast store. Skipping along under the long entrance canopy, Sahera thought of sugary sweets and turned to Helen

‘’My parents worked in the sugar refinery in Uganda’’

‘’Really !’’ remarked Helen, ‘‘that’s cool !’’

‘’My parents had to find a job in the local factory after living a comfortable life in Uganda….they had to leave their home and couldn’t even bring any savings, just a suitcase full of clothes and £50 in cash,” followed Sahera, bowing her head.

Helen suddenly felt very lucky that she just was given a small amount of pocket money regularly.

Oadby Hill

The Automatic sliding doors of Woolco slid open to reveal the daylight fading. The main lights on the main A6 dual carriageway that linked to Oadby to Leicester, started to flicker their amber. The pair gazed across the road toward the glowing lights of the race course and golf club. Never had they ventured to this ‘other place’ but they knew it held secrets.

Although the golf club was still operating, the nine holes in the centre of the course had long been closed. Some form of life still frequented the glowing spaces in the centre of the race circuit. Helen and Sahera would speculate endlessly, inventing daft and more ridiculous stories and proposals for the series of lights and what were the new plant-like structures that seemed to show up against the skyline at dusk. Oadby had long ago banned music and dancing in its pubs on a Saturday night unless the landlord had a licence from the justices.  

‘Perhaps’ asked Helen, ‘it’s a place where there is music and singing in Oadby on a Saturday ?.. Ever since Eva Mason from form 9 became a drunkard and was found lying outside the Black Dog in the gutter, it hasn’t been the same’’

Not so long ago, hordes of young people would stream into Oadby from Leicester on a Saturday night, as pubs in the city were banned from clients singing and dancing in their premises.

‘’Yes’’ replied Sahera, ‘‘the strength of feeling from the non-conformists in Oadby was enough to sway the opinions of the conservatist-controlled council into adopting the Public Health Act, which required landlord’s to have a licence to play music and have dancing. Music died from the suburb, such a shame!’’

Helen knew that the old magic had to be contained there in the middle of the racecourse, where spare land was encircled by a white-fenced track. Bizarrely, the only way of entering is when the revolving track came to standstill and crossing points were opened to the central section.

‘Shall we go and take a look now’ suggested Sahera.’it’s still not too dark and there are no races on the track anymore’. Helen seemed a little nervous but excited at the idea that Sahera was up for it. They had always wanted to know what the strange glowing lights were distributed in the middle piece of land and the moving track.

‘yea, okay, lets do it !’ Helen replied.

Crossing the circuit – the edge of Mid-urbia

 By the time Helen and Sahera reached the outskirts of the race course, the wind had picked up and large grey clouds began to race across the darkening sky in the direction of Leicester. Sahera shivered suddenly and pulled out her woolly gloves out of her pocket. ‘‘When we first came to this country, we needed a lot of clothes ! ’’ exclaimed Sahera,

‘’Yea, it always gets cold every winter here !’’ remarked Helen. Helen tried to imagine them both in a hot country like Uganda, to make her feel warmer.

Helen became concerned about crossing over the track. The horse racing had stopped many years ago after a national outcry when evidence of horse cruelty was proved by scientists and the overwhelming pressure from came from The League against Cruel Sports. Many rooms occupied the central circuit area. Originally rooms to serve the members of the golf club, they now lay scattered, their ceilings missings, they glowed gently in the evening light. There was the green lounge, the trophy room, the Gary Player bar, the Green Tee, the Bridge room, the Oadby Club golf shop, to mention a few. The Playroom sits on what was originally the tenth green.

The track now is an endless river of long thick grass constantly moving and thrashing and flowing like a rapid river.  Occasionally a paper wrapped parcel boat would pass by offering it’s open belly for a tempting lift, but it was a dangerous manoeuvre to jump into and hope that the boat reached the other side, at the correct time in the correct place !. Eighteen boats each serving the holes of the course would stop at a designated point to deposit its occupants, but in this weather it was not going to an easy ride.  Sahera was starting to regret her decision about venturing onto the course....the realisation that it wasn’t going to be straightforward to cross the track brought back fears from being a young 5 year old leaving her home. The same feelings of stepping into the unknown and not knowing what the other side would be like, started to re-emerge. Sahera started to shiver a little, she whispered to Helen

“I didn’t know where I was going, what I would do in a new country. I had no experience of leaving Uganda before,” said Sahera, as soon as she had the courage.

“We didn’t speak English. It was like starting all over again in an alien country.”

‘Don’t worry Sahera, I’ll see you across’ returned Helen. However Helen was also apprehensive, after having experienced crossing over into Leicester as a young six year old child and being very much behind with learning at school – what if I meet the others from school on the other side ? they will always be cleverer more than me ! thought Helen.

‘‘I could here the sound of gunshots in the airport’’ said Sahara, more desperately, “and we had to leave our Dad behind’’

Helen felt her fears in that moment, fall into some insignificance, turning to Sahera.. ‘‘how stressful for you Sahera, I just can’t imagine it !’’ replied Helen.

At that moment, Sahera caught site of an open boat sailing toward them. She knew they had to be quick. Extraordinary bravery prevailed. Sahera grabbed Helen’s hand and she pulled them over the boundary fence and straight into the papery vessel.

The wind seemed to swing on its own axis, turning the river into a whirlwind of perpetual motion. The girl’s boat was swept along immediately into the circuit, buffeting against the wips of grass blades and propelled down the track. Covering their faces in fear they had no notion of which direction they were heading, as they were thrown in all directions. Sahera started to realise that they passed the old crowd viewing terrace twice, so they had almost completed two circuits before finally hitting the stumps of a former hedge jump by the tenth stop. They were both rudely thrown out of the vessel into the inside of the fence, on the inner side of the track.

mid-urbia

Originally the fairway of the tenth green, the girls slowly picked themselves up and scrambled over the bumpy soggy ground to retreat quickly from the menacing circuit. The area was sited almost immediately at the far end of the racecourse, down a slight slope toward the race track fencing and had always been troubled by water logging. Now filled over, the ground about was rugged and interrupted by uneven mounds of grass with discarded objects poking through. These consisted of mainly the scrap pieces of typewriter that were originally dumped in mid-urbia, when the Imperial Typewriter factory interior was cleared in 1975. Since those times, new growths of typewriter keys have taken hold and populated the landscape. It is strictly forbidden to cut or remove these precious growths as they form a lasting legacy to the Imperial Typewriter workers.

Helen looked up at some of the letters on the keys. Coughing out some grass and moisture from her mouth, she managed to ask Sahera,

‘Did your parents work in the Imperial typewriter factory ?.

‘No’ replied Sahera..‘but my parents did have to find a job in the local factory after living a comfortable life in Uganda’.

Sahera remembered Tayeb who lived on the same street as her. ‘Tayeb told me once’, said Sahera.. ‘‘that both his parents worked at the Imperial typewriter factory and during the strike we were destitute, it was a very difficult time’’

Both Helen and Sahera started to feel uncomfortable as darkness had now finally descended. Sahera was so glad that Helen was with her, as the dark and cold reminded her of arriving in the camp at Greenham Common when she first came into the country seven years ago. Sahera took Helen’s arm into hers and remarked, ‘There was racism in the camps but also acts of kindness…there was a great sense of comradery, thank you for being my good friend Helen’.

The glowing light was straight in front of them. The girls realised that the glowing beacons in the night were rooms with walls, windows and doors. As they approached they could make out huge shapes outside the room, shadowed against the lit interior. Although Helen’s memory couldn’t recall, she knew instinctively the room was a playroom.

Clumps of golf flags swayed in the wind, the sound of their flapping material against the poles was quite deafening at times. Giant plant stems with huge patterned cowls bowed over the playroom to shelter the interior, already responding to the near threat of rain coming from the south west. The wind flowers were rotating wildly at various speeds depending on their size and shape. They provided constant energy to the playroom at all times. Some of the huge petals had come away from previous high winds and had been left on the ground, swept up against the walls of the playroom. Some of their thin sails made from typewriter onion paper, with traces of striker’s slogans which could be just made out, were battered and discoloured. Helen could see that no one had visited from maintenance for quite some time which made her feel sad. A tatty old piece of fabric floated in the wind and landed at Helen’s feet, sticking to her shoe. On second glance, it did seem to be the flag from the tenth green. The magic was alive !

into The Playroom

The teenagers knew that time would stand still and that no one could disturb their playtime. Sahera felt safe now and relieved that they had made the journey. To continue her revelation from earlier, Sahera spoke again

‘Helen, I felt alienation in the form of racism but also a sense of relief that we were safe’ said Sahera. Helen knew Sahera felt safe now.

On entering through the outside door of the playroom, their eyes lit up wide as giant jelly mould shapes rose above them, occupying most of the space inside. Beautiful Kaju Barfi diamonds coated in festive silver strung themselves across the space, intermingled with bright sparkling lanterns and beads. Giant newspaper wrapped presents floated down from above, suspended on sock yarn threads which weaved their way across the ceiling. There was no wind inside, no cold and no darkness. The girls looked up, they were illuminated beneath the giant party bowls with bright warm lights shining down, whose graceful heads bowed over the playroom to offer protection and shelter. They became smaller and once again were the five year old children from 1972.

Time stood still. Both girls had come home but knew their time was limited. Recognizable objects from their early childhood took on a super-realism of a magnitude that was breath-taking. Everything fitted and worked together beautifully. Common understandings and themes from the past were fused into a new form of interaction and seamless complexity. From hearing Sahera’s story through the journey of that evening, Helen could only feel a deep and consolidated appreciation of the person and place before her eyes.